The Infernal Cakewalk – Trick Film & Beyond at FACT

The Infernal Cakewalk – Trick Film & Beyond at FACT, 21-24 November 2007

This programme of film and video celebrates rebels, innovators and tricksters. Curated by James Harding and inspired by the early trick films of the 1890s and 1900s, interconnected programmes will bring together an expansive selection of films from early cinema, avant-garde film and recent artist’s film and video.

Three themed screenings – The Body Transformed, Time and Space Machine and Spirits – are based on tracing a spirit of ‘spectacular’ energy present in the early trick film, but absent from dominant narrative cinema. The programmes include work by George Melies, Segundo De Chomon, R.W. Paul, Kenneth Anger, Peter Weiss, Steven Arnold, David Lynch, Peter Tscherkassky, Guy Maddin, Mark Aerial Waller and Izabella Pruska-Oldenhof.

There will also be a live performance with film by artist Mark Aerial Waller. The Wayward Cannon, founded by Waller in 2001, is a shifting platform for the re-evaluation of cinema. In addition we will be showing two feature-length films; Luis Bunuel’s seminal masterpiece Le Charme Discret De La Bourgeoisie (1972), and Guy Maddin’s filmThe Saddest Music In The Word (2003).